Tegenkamp and Metivier Baillie Triumph at USA 20K

Monday, September 3, 2012, 4:49 pm

By Peter Gambaccini

Photo of Renee Metivier Baillie by Victah Sailer

Two athletes who were moving up considerably from their traditional distances had what they needed to vanquish their closest challengers at the USA 20K in New Haven, Connecticut on Monday. Matt Tegenkamp, who ran the 5000 meters at the 2008 Olympics and the 10,000 at recent London Olympics, zoomed away from Luke

[3] Puskedra in the final 650 meters to win the men’s title in 58:30, while Renee Metivier Baillie, who has been on U.S. teams at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships and is a onetime USATF indoor 3000-meter champ, outlasted Molly Pritz to take first in the women’s competition in 1:07:08.Tegenkamp’s time, in his longest career race, was a USA 20K record, even though he acknowledged, “I didn’t know what I was doing out there.” He was a bit astonished that the “chase pack” allowed Puskedra to amass a 20-second lead by the 8K mark. "I didn't think the pack would let it get that far away," Tegenkamp would later comment. Puskedra himself was thinking, “I knew I had to run away from Tegenkamp, but the latter had pulled to within four seconds by the 15K mark and pulled even soon after. Tegenkamp’s finish was ferocious; he gained 18 seconds in the final 650 meters. Puskedra was second in 58:48, Kenyan-born athletes Augustus Maiyo, Joseph Chirlee and Robert Cheseret were third, fourth, and fifth, respectively and Sean Quigley, the USA 20K champ in 2010, was sixth. Further back, Kevin Castille was establishing a new masters 20K record of 1:02:02, erasing Paul Pilkington’s 1999 standard of 1:03:06.Metivier Baillie, who’d had surgery on her right Achilles tendon earlier this year and is training for the Bank of American Chicago Marathon, said the 20K “is really long for me, and I'm moving up. So, I was a little nervous in how I would be in the final miles, you know? Even though I'm confident in my speed." She indeed had sufficient speed to defeat Molly Pritz by 13 seconds; Pritz observed,"Renee was so strong in the final bit there, I couldn't keep up." Stephanie Rothstein was third and Serena Burla was fourth. More[4] and More[5]